


Thaw

by homsantoft (tofsla)



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Demons, Dragon Age Kink Meme, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-19 01:34:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5951181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tofsla/pseuds/homsantoft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An attack by a Despair Demon in the Emprise du Lion leaves the Iron Bull shaken and unable to get warm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thaw

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Mary for helping me sort through my ideas on this one, and to Jasper for organising the Adoribull Kink Meme Fill Week & making the kmeme more approachable.
> 
> Full kmeme prompt:
> 
>  
> 
> _An attack by a Despair Demon in the Emprise du Lion leaves Iron Bull shaken and unable to get warm. Dorian notices, and if there's one thing he understands, it's being too bloody cold._
> 
>  
> 
> _He sets about warming Bull up, whether with sex or magic or just body heat._
> 
>  
> 
> _Slash, pre-slash or even friendship/gen are all good._

Funny, Bull thought. Vertigo's not really my thing. But his stomach lurched all the same. A terrible cold dread. The edge of the cliff pulled at him, ground tilting away, down, down to the forest below, and he thought—yeah, well, alright then. 

He thought: Guess I've been on the edge of madness long enough. 

He thought: What's one more fall?

He thought: hey, at least it's not Seheron. 

Someone barrelled into his shoulder, slamming him away from the edge. Mia, harsh grey face washed out pale—he should know with what emotion, but he felt slow, thoughts congealing like the first ice on a river.

A burst of fire behind him, more seen than felt, flickered brilliantly across the clean snow. Glinted off Mia's polished horn caps.

"As much as all demons are a public nuisance," Dorian said, "I find myself particularly tired of these pesky despair types. As though one wasn't cold enough already."

"Ugh," Bull said.

"That means he agrees," Mia said, and climbed off his chest, offered him a hand. He ignored it, fumbled after his axe where it had slid away onto the ice behind him.

"Thanks for the mind reading trick, Boss," he said.

"Oh, you can talk," Mia said. "Do get up, Bull."

Concern. It was concern on her face. 

He heaved himself up, brushed himself down. Slow, so slow, cold clinging to him inside and out. Fake it, then.

"Right," he said. "What do we fight next?"

 

 

Back across Judicael's Crossing, and Bull kept pace. A bitingly cold wind, stinging with moisture. The clouds were dark, threatening snow. He felt less solid than usual, thin, an impersonation of himself. A paper doll that could be blown away.

Ah, fuck it. No use thinking like that. It was the damned cold, that was all. 

"My dear," Vivienne said, "do pay attention." The look she gave him was kind, and he had a terrible moment of thinking she was going to ask him—what?

His thoughts stuttered again.

"Sorry, Ma'am," he said. 

Dorian, at his side, rolled his eyes. "I don't imagine he heard a word you were saying. Dragons, you know."

Dragons. What dragons?

There: one great high dragon wheeling above them, crying and crying.

Damn it.

"Of course," Vivienne said indulgently. "Well, you'll forgive me if I find the prospect of fighting a dragon on top of everything else that's happened today a _little_ much."

"We can't all share these special interests," Dorian said. "Or indeed understand them."

For a moment Bull thought that some private understanding passed between Vivienne and Dorian, and then he thought that he had only imagined it, and then the moment was gone regardless.

 

 

The wind was too harsh even by the circle of fires in camp, and Bull retreated, picking shelter over trying to warm himself by the flames. A calming ritual: he cleaned and sharpened his blades with careful, slow movements. Axe, daggers. Sorted through his pack, grown messy over their weeks on the road, and folded clothes, lined everything up. 

Order.

It didn't seem enough. A sense of incompleteness. Boots lined up carefully by the tent flap, bedroll straightened out. Cold aching in his bones.

The tent flap lifting made him look up sharply, lantern swinging as he clipped it with a horn. Shadows danced wildly.

Dorian. 

"Hey," Bull said. "Bit early for sex, isn't it?"

"Bull," Dorian said, firmly, and closed the flap behind him, "I'm not going to remark upon your choice of greeting, considering the probable circumstances. I must ask—are you terribly cold? Little icicles hanging from your brain and so on?"

Bull stared at him.

"Humour me," Dorian said. "It's simply—well—despair is a very cold sort of thing, you know. It would be perfectly understandable. And goodness knows I'm familiar with how miserable being too cold can get."

"Fucking demon crap," Bull growled, raised his eyes to the lantern rather than seeing whatever was on Dorian's face. "It's not enough that you set it on fire?"

"After-effects can linger all the same," Dorian said. A healer voice. Better bedside manner than some he'd met, anyway. "I could—help, if you would allow it."

Bull looked back to Dorian at that, blinked away the bright halo the lamplight had left in his vision. If anything, Dorian looked kind of nervous, fingers to his lips to hide the uncertain slant of his mouth.

"Magic," Bull said.

"Well, yes."

This Bull already knew: he'd let Dorian do pretty much anything to him.

But the question was this: what was it that made Dorian offer?

An answer his mind couldn't find the shape of, struggling as it was.

"Do it," he said.

"Kneel for me," Dorian said softly, and knelt himself. Chest to chest, not even half an arm's length between them. Dorian looked up at him through dark lashes, and oh, it meant—something.

It meant something.

 

 

A hand, then. Dorian's, solidly elegant, the fingernails well-trimmed. His fingertips were pressed lightly to Bull's sternum, shifting with the slow rise and fall of Bull's breathing. Dorian's eyes were on him, intent, studying his face for some secret sign.

"Huh," Bull said, baffled, "are you," and then he felt it: 

A slow bloom of warmth which seemed to begin in his heart.

It eased out through him, heartbeat by heartbeat, Dorian spreading through him, Dorian's magic in his blood, Dorian—

Bull had been in love before. Oh, he knew it, that brilliant excitement of learning a person, giving to them. He had known he was in love with Dorian.

He hadn't known it could matter whether he was loved back or not.

The possibility that he was grew in him with the warmth.

And there: the thing lost its grip on his mind, broke like sea ice in spring. Not a gentle release. Splintering and cracking with a violent force that shook him.

But there was Dorian's right hand, pressed flat to his chest now; his left, laid against Bull's cheek. 

"That's it," Dorian said. "There, there, you're quite safe—I have you."

And he did.

Bull slumped. Forward, and Dorian was there to catch him, to guide him.

A kiss, as slow and gentle as Dorian's magic inside him.

"What," Dorian said, looked up at him. A hand to his lips again, this time in some sort of amazement, eyes wide with it. "You—"

He said: "Amatus—"

A tiny noise in his throat as though the word had surprised him as much as Bull.

"Crap," Bull said, struck by sudden memory. "I told you I thought you were only here for sex. Dorian—"

"Despair," Dorian said. "In a way, I suppose one ought to take it as a sort of encouragement, although I'll admit it stung more than a little in the moment. But believe me, a great many people have believed I was only interested in sex, and none of them have kissed me like that afterwards." His gaze slid away, as though the words were hard to say—forever confident, forever anxious. Defiance despite fear. Oh, Dorian.

Impossibly, Bull felt it. Some residue of Dorian's magic that sung through him, hurt and worry and cautious hope. Concern. But above it all—

Well. Wasn't that something.

"Hey," Bull said, "come here." 

He gathered Dorian to him. 

"I thought," Dorian said, the words trembling against Bull's throat, "that you might throw yourself from the wretched bridge, you know."

Dorian on one side, Vivienne on the other, exchanging significant looks that he'd been too slow to read. 

"Nah," Bull said. "Not with you there."

"No need to sound so proud," Dorian murmured, sighed. "No matter, I suppose. Here you are."

"Here I am," Bull said, and encouraged Dorian up for another long, slow kiss, and felt perfectly, entirely warm.


End file.
